About

Yiman Wang is a professor affiliated with the Division of Arts, specifically within the Film and Digital Media Department at UC Santa Cruz. Her areas of expertise include film history, Chinese cinema and its transnational connections, early Asian American cinema and theater, feminist film and media histories, gender studies, film theory and history, documentary and educational film, trans-socialist film and media, critical race and ethnic studies, critical animal studies, eco-cinema, environmental media, and postcolonial and decolonial studies and practices. Wang has made significant contributions through her research on Chinese cinema, its historical and transnational aspects, and Asian American media, with notable publications including monographs on Chinese cinema and Anna May Wong. Her scholarly work has been recognized with numerous awards, fellowships, and grants, and she has an extensive publication record comprising journal articles, book chapters, and monographs. Wang's research emphasizes the cultural, political, and social dimensions of film, with a focus on Asian and Asian American media, and she actively engages in transcultural and environmental media studies.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Internal medicine
• Intensive care medicine
• Demography
• Nursing
• Psychiatry
• Physical therapy
• Surgery

Selected publications

• Comparative study of the variability of the phytoplankton biomass in two upwelling zones of the western Arabian Sea from 2003 to 2020

  Marine Pollution Bulletin · 2025-01-08 · 2 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Metal–polyphenol network-based multifunctional materials for tumor therapy: Intrinsic properties, advances, and applications

  Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica B · 2025-12-02

  articleOpen access

  Metal–polyphenol networks (MPNs), a novel class of nano-biomaterials, have recently emerged as promising candidates for tumor diagnosis and therapy due to their unique chemical tunability, excellent biocompatibility, and synergistic multifunctionality. Notably, MPNs can be synthesized via one-step or multi-step approaches, allowing precise control over their morphology, size, and drug-loading capacity. The versatility of MPNs is further demonstrated by their ability to integrate multiple therapeutic modalities, including chemotherapy, photothermal therapy, photodynamic therapy, and chemical dynamic therapy. Furthermore, through surface modification with targeted molecules, MPNs enable tumor-specific targeting while facilitating real-time therapeutic monitoring via multimodal imaging. Additionally, MPNs exhibit excellent biocompatibility and superior biodegradability, making them highly suitable for biomedical applications. This review systematically explores MPN synthesis strategies and physicochemical properties. It then comprehensively analyzes MPN-based biomaterials and their tumor therapeutic mechanisms. Furthermore, we evaluate the challenges in MPN clinical translation and propose future perspectives for precise tumor treatment using MPN-based platforms. Ultimately, this review highlights the transformative potential of MPNs in advancing tumor theranostics and lays the foundation for their future clinical applications. This paper provides a systematic review of MPNs, aims to offer new insights for designing next-generation MPN-based nanoplatforms with optimized tumor targeting and enhanced therapeutic efficacy.

  PublisherDOI

• Refrain: The Second Beginning in the Wong Time (Intersti-racial Comic Melancholia)

  2024-06-25

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Luminos is University of California Press’ Open Access publishing program for monographs. With the same high standards for selection, peer review, production and marketing as our traditional program, Luminos is a transformative model, built as a partnership where costs and benefits are shared.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Sticking with <i>Trans</i> : Reconsidering Chinese American Cinema through Anna May Wong

  Journal of Chinese Cinemas · 2024-01-02 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This article asks what exactly makes the trans a key concept in our understanding of Sino-American filmic transactions. By studying two silent films of the Chinese American film pioneer, Anna May Wong (1905–1961), with special attention to her mercurial sartorial performances, I analyze her interstitial trans position between nations, communities, cultures, between audiences here-now and elsewhere-another time, and between objecthood and subjecthood. I stress the trans position as a tension-ridden field that resists easy resolution, thereby challenges American assimilationism and China's ethno-nationalism all at once. I argue that this trans position, which appears to be stuck and suspended, offers a theoretical and methodological framework for unpacking Wong's legacy, and more broadly, the complexity of diasporic Chinese and Chinese American film cultures.

  PublisherDOI

• Encore the Performer-Worker: Meeting Anna May Wong’s “Greetings”

  2024-06-25

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Luminos is University of California Press’ Open Access publishing program for monographs. With the same high standards for selection, peer review, production and marketing as our traditional program, Luminos is a transformative model, built as a partnership where costs and benefits are shared.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Putting on Another Show: Spotlighting Anna May Wong in Theater

  2024-06-25

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Luminos is University of California Press’ Open Access publishing program for monographs. With the same high standards for selection, peer review, production and marketing as our traditional program, Luminos is a transformative model, built as a partnership where costs and benefits are shared.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The health-related quality of life for hemiarthroplasty and total hip arthroplasty in the elderly: A meta-analysis

  Frontiers in Medicine · 2023-02-24 · 11 citations

  reviewOpen access

  Purpose What constitutes the optimal surgical plan for femoral neck fractures (FNFs) in elderly patients is controversial. The European quality of life 5-Dimension Questionnaire (EU-5Q) is an international scale used to measure the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) after surgery. We aim to verify the hip arthroplasty effect in elderly patients by analyzing HRQoL scores in the EU-5Q scale. Methods We searched the EBSCO, Embase, PubMed, Ovid, Cochrane Library, and Web of Science databases using strict searching from established to 30 November 2022; used the Cochrane Library's Risk of Bias Assessment Tool and the Newcastle–Ottawa Scale to evaluate the literature; and used RevMan5.4.1 software to perform a meta-analysis. All the included studies used the EU-5Q scale to validate the overall outcomes for elderly hip arthroplasty. Results The final included literature is composed of four RCTs, two cohort studies, three case–control trials, and three cross-sectional surveys. This study compared HRQoL scores measured by the EU-5Q scale, including 328 elderly patients with total hip arthroplasty (THA) and 323 elderly patients with hemiarthroplasty, which is statistically significant (OR = 0.05; 95% CI, 0.02~0.08; P = 0.002). The subgroups were as follows: unipolar vs. bipolar and cemented vs. uncemented hemiarthroplasty (OR = 0.06; 95% CI, 0.03~0.08; P &amp;lt; 0.001), follow-up time and age arthroplasty (OR = 0.16; 95% CI, 0.11~0.22; P &amp;lt; 0.001), molecular exercise and enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) (OR = 0.02; 95% CI,−0.03~0.07; P = 0.38), and analysis of hemiarthroplasty with cognitive dysfunction vs. the normal group (OR = 0.17; 95% CI, 0.08~0.26; P &amp;lt; 0.001). The outcome analysis was consistent with the included studies, and HRQoL of the EU-5Q scale is sensitive to surgical outcomes between THA and hemiarthroplasty. Conclusion Surgeons still need to further evaluate and verify whether the hip arthroplasty surgical program or effect in elderly patients is optimal. Hemiarthroplasty operations in elderly patients have pointed toward a new direction for clinical treatment, and HRQoL scores measured by the EU-5Q can sensitively reflect the rehabilitation status after hip arthroplasty surgery. Moreover, the extensive correlation between surgical outcomes and perioperative neurocognitive function should be further investigated.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Understanding Health-Related Quality of Life in Kidney Transplant Recipients: The Role of Symptom Experience and Illness Perceptions

  Transplant International · 2023-04-13 · 15 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The purpose of our article is to investigate the impact of symptom experience on health related quality of life (HRQOL) in kidney transplant recipients (KTRs) and whether illness perceptions mediated this impact. Symptom experience, illness perceptions, and HRQOL were measured at transplantation and 6 weeks after transplantation in KTRs in an ongoing Dutch cohort study. Multivariable linear regression models were used for the analysis. 90 KTRs were analyzed. Fatigue and lack of energy were the most prevalent and burdensome symptoms at transplantation. Mental HRQOL at 6 weeks after transplantation was comparable to that of the general Dutch population (mean [standard deviation, SD]: 49.9 [10.7]) versus 50.2 [9.2]), while physical HRQOL was significantly lower (38.9 [9.1] versus 50.6 [9.2]). Experiencing more symptoms was associated with lower physical and mental HRQOL, and the corresponding HRQOL reduced by -0.15 (95%CI, -0.31; 0.02) and -0.23 (95%CI, -0.42; -0.04) with each additional symptom. The identified mediation effect suggests that worse symptom experiences could cause more unhelpful illness perceptions and consequently lead to lower HRQOL. Illness perceptions may explain the negative impact of symptom experience on HRQOL. Future studies at later stages after kidney transplantation are needed to further explore the mediation effect of illness perceptions and guide clinical practice to improve HRQOL.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Reanimating the Socialist Child—Queerly: The Sideways of a Chinese Animation Nezha naohai

  Journal of cinema and media studies · 2023-03-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Reanimating the Socialist Child—Queerly:The Sideways of a Chinese Animation Nezha naohai Yiman Wang (bio) IN THE BEGINNING—IS SUICIDE, with a sword, by a child, in an animation, in one of my earliest movie memories. I was shocked, captivated, obsessed. Four decades later, merely mentally picturing the scene still arrests my heart, undams my tears. This scene remains so overwhelming because it ambushed me. Growing up in socialist China, going to block-booked movies was a student's obligation. With no trailer, no spoiler, not even offered a poster, I had no interest in a film called Nezha naohai (Prince Nezha's Triumph Against Dragon King, Wang Shuchen, Xu Jingda, Yan Dingxian, 1979). Who is Nezha anyway—a difficult name, sounding odd, barely even sensible as a name. Why should I care about someone with a nonsensible name doing something nonsensical like churning up the sea (the literal meaning of the Chinese title)? Little did I know that this pivotal scene of the child's suicide and subsequent rebirth would become a portal for my appreciation of the queering power within a patently individualistic child hero animated feature. In the theater, I remained unengaged despite all the spectacular scenes of Nezha fighting and defeating the dragons and other anthropomorphized aquatic animals—until the scene of suicide. The freeze-frame extreme close-up of Nezha's large enraged eyes filling the screen drove into my heart the unbearable intensity of memories, despair, defiance, letting go, and grief, even as life is drifting away from Nezha's body. [End Page 176] Along with that shocking image, also ingrained in my sensorium are Nezha's parting words to General Li: "Daddy, I return to you your flesh and bones. You shall not be responsible for what I have done!" This is followed by Nezha crying out into the universe "Shifu!" (Master!) in a wide-angle long shot. In concert with torrential rain, cracking lightning, and rolling thunder, the child unleashes utmost despair and rebels against the blood lineage that locks everybody into relationships of indebtedness, relationships that demand conformity based on one's status as a descendant. To slash this trap, which conceptualizes one's corporeal body as the evidence of one's debt to progenitors, Nezha turns their back on their father, the audience, and the camera and slits their throat, a scene that ends in a freeze-frame. With this finite cut and cut-off, time stops, raindrops hangs still, Nezha's companion deer and human family members are all caught suspended in motion, mouth agape in shock. The rushing background orchestration crescendos, then abruptly falls silent as if in mourning—and anticipation. A child has relinquished their "flesh and bones" to the parent and summarily canceled the debt. Breaking the cosmic silence is a pluck of a Chinese pipa string instrument that cascades into agitated musical notes, as the human-born Nezha gazes at this world one last time. Those mortal eyes fill the screen (in the shot that opens this essay), their one tear congealing rage and grief, electrifying the screen. As the rushing pipa notes give way to mournful violins, Nezha's unrelenting gaze lap dissolves into the companion deer galloping midair in slow motion, followed by a shot of the child's hands groping, oneiric, for huntianling (a long red sash that sweeps the heaven topsy-turvy) and qiankunquan (a gold ring that unsettles the cosmos)—a pair of magic weapons given to them by Shifu. With one last tear rolling down their cheek, Nezha's eyes close. The child-shaped flesh and bones now lie flat, gently licked by the deer who has arrived with the weapons, too late. These magic weapons have enabled Nezha to defeat the dragons and have subsequently been confiscated by their father to forestall more troubles. This scene ends with a lap dissolve, and the child's body is gone, leaving behind a shining bead to be carried by a crane to Shifu. WHAT COULD A CHILD HAVE DONE— that requires a life for atonement, or rather, to save the father from being implicated? Per the film's narrative, Nezha has, with their powerful magic weapons, enraged the children...

  PublisherDOI

• Age and gender differences in symptom experience and health-related quality of life in kidney transplant recipients: a cross-sectional study

  Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation · 2023 · 17 citations

  • Medicine
  • Physical therapy
  • Demography

  BACKGROUND: Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) is an increasingly important patient-reported outcome in kidney transplant recipients (KTRs). This study explored relationships between symptom prevalence and burden with HRQOL, and age and gender differences in symptom experience. METHODS: Eligible Dutch KTRs transplanted in Leiden University Medical Center were invited for this cross-sectional study. HRQOL, and occurrence and burden of 62 symptoms were measured using validated questionnaires. Univariate and multivariate regression analysis were used for investigating the associations of symptom experience with mental and physical HRQOL, and differences in symptom experience between genders and KTRs of diverse age groups. RESULTS: A total of 631 KTRs were analyzed; the mean (standard deviation) age was 61.3 (11.3) years, and 62% were male. The median (interquartile range) number of symptoms was 14 (7-22), with a burden of 20 (8-37; range 0-244). Per extra symptom, physical and mental HRQOL decreased [-0.41 (-0.50; -0.31) and -0.51 (-0.59; -0.42), respectively, P < .001]. Most occurring symptoms were bruises, tiredness, lack of energy, urge to urinate at night and dry skin. Sexual problems were considered most burdensome. Female KTRs reported more symptoms than men. Amongst others, younger KTRs experienced more (18-50 > 50-65 ≥65 years) feelings of depression and both female and younger KTRs reported higher symptom prevalence concerning changes in physical appearance. CONCLUSION: KRTs' symptom experience differed depending on gender and age, highlighting the need to develop tailored treatment strategies to reduce symptom experience and subsequently improve HRQOL.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Jinshu Wang

  81 shared

• Meiling Zhou

  Affiliated Hospital of Southwest Medical University

  43 shared

• Wei Liu

  Shaoyang University

  23 shared

• Xizhu Zhang

  University of Jinan

  16 shared

• Fan Yang

  Qinhuangdao Science and Technology Bureau

  13 shared

• Wei Liu

  ShanghaiTech University

  12 shared

• Jiancan Yang

  Beijing University of Technology

  11 shared

• Xiaobing Luo

  Huazhong University of Science and Technology

  11 shared

Awards & honors

• Residency Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Berlin Institute fo…
• Committee on Research Large Project Grant, UC Santa Cruz Sum…
• Transcultural Studies Fellowship (Heidelberg University) 202…
• NEH (National Endowment for Humanities) Faculty Award for Hi…
• NEH Mellow Fellowship for Digital Publication (declined) 201…